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  • Teeing Off With Chris Leone at OpenWorld 2012

    - by Kathryn Perry
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A guest post by Chris Leone, Senior Vice President, Oracle Applications Development Monday morning in downtown San Francisco - lots of sunshine, plenty of traffic, and sidewalks chocked full of people with fresh faces and blister free feet. Let the week of Oracle OpenWorld begin! For a great Applications start, Chris Leone packed the house with his Fusion Applications overview session - he covered strategy, scope, roadmaps, and customer successes. Fusion Apps, the world's best SaaS suite, is built on 100 percent standards. Chris talked about its information driven user experience, its innovative design, and the choice of deployment. People can run Fusion in the cloud, in a managed / hosted environment, or on premise -- or they can use a combination of these three models. About seventy percent of our customers go with SaaS. Release 5 of Fusion Apps will become available soon. The cadence of releases will be three times a year. The key drivers are to accelerate business success (no rip and replace) and to simplify business processes. Chris told the audience that organic Fusion is the centerpiece of our cloud solutions, rounded out with acquired offerings such as Taleo Recruiting and RightNow Customer Service. From the cloud solutions, customers can expect real time and predictive BI, social capabilities, choice of deployment, and more productivity because of a next generation UX called FUSE. Chris's demo showed a super easy, new UI that touts self service navigation. We'll blog about FUSE in the very near future. Chris said the next 365 days of Fusion Apps would include more localization, more industries, more power, more mobile, and more configurability. The audience was challenged to think hard about how Fusion could be part of their three-to-five year plans. Chris set up a great opportunity for you to follow up with your customers as they explore the possibilities.

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  • Plymouth and GRUB do not show at all

    - by WarriorIng64
    I am using Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit as my only OS on my desktop computer, which used to only run Ubuntu 10.04 LTS until I had the time to upgrade it with a fresh install. It uses integrated NVIDIA graphics (listed as a GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 by the NVIDIA X Server Settings utility) with the current proprietary driver as provided by the Additional Drivers utility, and has a VGA connection to a 1680x1050 Acer monitor. I used to get the (ugly-looking version of) Plymouth graphical boot screen while under 10.04. It didn't look that great, but I was fine with it. Now, it doesn't show on 11.04 at all during boot (I just get an error message in a moving gray box from the monitor saying "Input Not Supported"), and only rarely it will show on shutdown, all garbled up. I could not get GRUB to show during boot while holding down Shift, either (same error message), but pressing Enter while it should be up starts the system normally. A picture of the error message I was getting: Once fully booted, the system still shows the login screen and desktop just fine. Any information on how to troubleshoot this would be appreciated. If there's any hardware-specific stuff I forgot to include here, let me know the relevant commands to run in a comment below. Things that I've tried: Running plymouth in a framebuffer: no effect Booting with nomodeset as my grub boot: option no effect Booting with nomodeset and plymouth in a framebuffer: no effect other than Plymouth showing during shutdown only Following the Softpedia instructions for fixing Plymouth's resolution: Problem mostly solved, except logo does not show in Plymouth during boot, and both grub and Plymouth are slightly off-center #4 above, but with nomodeset removed as a grub boot option: same effect as #4 #5 above, but with vt.handoff=7 added as a grub boot option: same effect as #4 I have added the current contents of /etc/default/grub as requested in the comments: # If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update # /boot/grub/grub.cfg. # For full documentation of the options in this file, see: # info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration' GRUB_DEFAULT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true GRUB_TIMEOUT=10 GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian` GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash video=uvesafb:mode_option=1280x1024-24,mtrr=3,scroll=ywrap" GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" # Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs # This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains # the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...) #GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef" # Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only) #GRUB_TERMINAL=console # The resolution used on graphical terminal # note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE # you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo' GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024 # Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux #GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true # Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries #GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true" # Uncomment to get a beep at grub start #GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1" CURRENT STATUS: I forgot to uncomment one line as per "things that I've tried" #4, so I took care of that. I can now see GRUB during startup when I hold Shift and a normal-looking Plymouth during shutdown...but Plymouth during boot is now just a solid purple screen. In each case, it's displayed a little off-center to the left, with a thin black bar running down the right side of the monitor. The error pictured above no longer shows. I'd say this problem is about 2/3 solved now. UPDATE: After Natty started freezing up on me, I decided to dual-boot with Oneiric, which unfortunately shows the same problems. Rather than trying all these workarounds though, I decided to do what I should have done from the start and file a pair of bug reports. LAST UPDATE: Bug 850908 has been confirmed as a legitimate nouveaufb bug. I have overwritten my 11.04 partition with 12.04 LTS, and I can confirm at this time that the issue is present there, as well. I will now flag this question to be closed, yet I hope it was helpful for anyone who experienced similar issues; if you are still having the same problem as me, please go there and mark yourself as affected. Thanks!

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  • Using Lambdas for return values in Rhino.Mocks

    - by PSteele
    In a recent StackOverflow question, someone showed some sample code they’d like to be able to use.  The particular syntax they used isn’t supported by Rhino.Mocks, but it was an interesting idea that I thought could be easily implemented with an extension method. Background When stubbing a method return value, Rhino.Mocks supports the following syntax: dependency.Stub(s => s.GetSomething()).Return(new Order()); The method signature is generic and therefore you get compile-time type checking that the object you’re returning matches the return value defined by the “GetSomething” method. You could also have Rhino.Mocks execute arbitrary code using the “Do” method: dependency.Stub(s => s.GetSomething()).Do((Func<Order>) (() => new Order())); This requires the cast though.  It works, but isn’t as clean as the original poster wanted.  They showed a simple example of something they’d like to see: dependency.Stub(s => s.GetSomething()).Return(() => new Order()); Very clean, simple and no casting required.  While Rhino.Mocks doesn’t support this syntax, it’s easy to add it via an extension method. The Rhino.Mocks “Stub” method returns an IMethodOptions<T>.  We just need to accept a Func<T> and use that as the return value.  At first, this would seem straightforward: public static IMethodOptions<T> Return<T>(this IMethodOptions<T> opts, Func<T> factory) { opts.Return(factory()); return opts; } And this would work and would provide the syntax the user was looking for.  But the problem with this is that you loose the late-bound semantics of a lambda.  The Func<T> is executed immediately and stored as the return value.  At the point you’re setting up your mocks and stubs (the “Arrange” part of “Arrange, Act, Assert”), you may not want the lambda executing – you probably want it delayed until the method is actually executed and Rhino.Mocks plugs in your return value. So let’s make a few small tweaks: public static IMethodOptions<T> Return<T>(this IMethodOptions<T> opts, Func<T> factory) { opts.Return(default(T)); // required for Rhino.Mocks on non-void methods opts.WhenCalled(mi => mi.ReturnValue = factory()); return opts; } As you can see, we still need to set up some kind of return value or Rhino.Mocks will complain as soon as it intercepts a call to our stubbed method.  We use the “WhenCalled” method to set the return value equal to the execution of our lambda.  This gives us the delayed execution we’re looking for and a nice syntax for lambda-based return values in Rhino.Mocks. Technorati Tags: .NET,Rhino.Mocks,Mocking,Extension Methods

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  • I spy a Live Framework portal

    - by jamiet
    Those that have followed my blogs for a while may know that I have a slightly banal interest in Windows Live and, more specifically, the Live Services developer platform'; if that doesn’t sound interesting to you then stop reading now. My interest mainly stems from the Live Mesh technology that was announced a couple of years ago and the data synchronisation platform API that underpins it; that platform is called the Live Framework or LiveFX for short. At the Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC) 2008 Microsoft made LiveFX available to the public as a Tech Preview and I spent some time learning to use it and also built a few test apps on it too. In August 2009 an announcement came that that tech preview was getting shut down: "At the Professional Developer Conference 2008, we gave the developer community access to the technical preview of the Live Framework. The Live Framework is core to our vision of providing you with a consistent programming interface. Now we are working to integrate existing services, controls and the Live Framework into the next release of Windows Live. Your feedback continues to help us build the best possible offerings for Windows Live users, for you and for your customers. " Since then news on LiveFX has disappeared save for a throwaway session at PDC09 and I was hoping that news was going to appear at this week’s MIX conference but nothing was forthcoming. Instead though today I stumbled upon an unannounced portal for future LiveFX applications on Microsoft’s Azure portal at http://live.azure.com. Check it out: I consider this to be very good news. This Azure portal was built after the LiveFX tech preview was decommissioned so seeing Live Services existing so prominently alongside Microsoft’s other cloud efforts like Windows Azure and SQL Azure vindicates my early investment in the platform and gives me hope that we’re going to see something get released very very soon. I believe that the potential uses for this platform are extremely compelling and I’m looking forward to trying some out in the near future. I am also expecting LiveFX to have a heavy dependency on the OData protocol that I talked about yesterday in my post OData.org updated - gives clues about future sql azure enhancements so you can tell where my interest in that stems from. In case you’re wondering the projects that you see listed above (Basic List Sample, JT-proj etc…) are projects that I built on the old Tech Preview platform so clearly that stuff has not gone for good which is also good news; not just because it means I’ll have access to the code I wrote before but I also assume it means that LiveFX won’t have changed much since its tech preview incarnation. I know there are other LiveFX buffs out there and hopefully this news reaches some of them. If you are one of them the please put a comment below and let me know your thoughts! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Remove Programs from the Open With Menu in Explorer

    - by Matthew Guay
    Would you like to clean up the Open with menu in Windows Explorer?  Here’s how you can remove program entries you don’t want in this menu on any version of Windows. Have you ever accidently opened an mp3 with Notepad, or a zip file with Word?  If so, you’re also likely irritated that these programs now show up in the Open with menu in Windows Explorer every time you select one of those files.  Whenever you open a file type with a particular program, Windows will add an entry for it to the Open with menu.  Usually this is helpful, but it can also clutter up the menu with wrong entries. On our computer, we have tried to open a PDF file with Word and Notepad, neither which can actually view the PDF itself.  Let’s remove these entries.  To do this, we need to remove the registry entries for these programs.  Enter regedit in your Start menu search or in the Run command to open the Registry editor. Backup your registry first just in case, so you can roll-back any changes you make if you accidently delete the wrong value.  Now, browse to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \ Explorer \FileExts\ Here you’ll see a list of all the file extensions that are registered on your computer. Browse to the file extension you wish to edit, click the white triangle beside it to see the subfolders, and select OpenWithList.  In our test, we want to change the programs associated with PDF files, so we select the OpenWithList folder under .pdf. Notice the names of the programs under the Data column on the right.  Right-click the value for the program you don’t want to see in the Open With menu and select Delete. Click Yes at the prompt to confirm that you want to delete this value. Repeat these steps with all the programs you want to remove from this file type’s Open with menu.  You can go ahead and remove entries from other file types as well if you wish. Once you’ve removed the entries you didn’t want to see, check out the Open with menu in Explorer again.  Now it will be much more streamlined and will only show the programs you want to see. Conclusion This simple trick can help you keep your Open with menu tidy, and only show the programs you want in the list.  It can be irritating to accidently open files in programs that can’t even read them.  This trick works in all versions of Windows, including 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Remove ISP Text or Corporate Branding from Internet Explorer Title BarRemove the Username From the Start Menu in XPKeep Start Menu From Closing After Opening ApplicationsRemove PartyPoker (Or Other Items) from the Internet Explorer Tools MenuUninstall, Disable, or Delete Internet Explorer 8 from Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app

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  • Earn $10 for each friend you refer to FREE Amazon Mom Account

    - by Gopinath
    If you are looking for options to earn some handful of referral bonuses then here is a great deal from Amazon. You can earn $10 for every friend/family member you refer to join free Amazon Mom trail account. What is Amazon Mom by the way? Amazon Mom is a free membership program created especially for parents and caretakers of small children. It gives free 2 days shipping of products purchased on Amazon.com, 20% discount on diapers, wipes and other baby stuff.  Though the name says Mom, it’s open to any one who has children. It does not matter whether you are father, grand parent, aunty or uncle. You can join the program and avail all the benefits of the program. It costs nothing to join FREE 3 months trail Amazon Mom costs $79/year, but anyone can join FREE 3 months trail and explore it with no cost. At the end of your 3 months trail you may either continue the program by paying the required amount or just opt out of it without any charges. You can learn more details about the Amazon Mom program benefits over here. To earn bonus you need to refer friends to join the free 3 months trail and as soon as they join Amazon will automatically credit $10 bonus to your Amazon.com account. Did you ever make money? Couple of weeks ago I saw this promotion and referred my friends. They loved the program as it gives a lot of discounts on baby diapers, wipes and they immediately joined. Within a 10 days they joined the program, Amazon sent emails to me confirming referral bonus. Here is a screen grab of one such referral email and my Amazon bonus are adding up every day as referrals pulling more people in to this program     How to refer friends and earn bonus? So you are ready to refer your friends and here are the steps to be followed Sign in to your Amazon.com account Go to Amazon Mom Referral page and copy the referral link displayed on screen Start sharing the link with your friends and request them to join the free trail If you own a blog or website, write about the program and let your readers know about it. You can also have a image banner on your website with referral link. Facebook and Twitter are the other two places where you can share the referral links and bring your friends on board. Know the rules and don’t gamble Amazon Mom referral program has few conditions that must be satisfied. Make sure that you read and understand all of them. Final and most important one is not to gamble Amazon! Yes, don’t play tricks like referring yourself or creating fake Amazon Mom accounts  in order to earn money. By gambling you may be able to cheat Amazon for a while, but as soon as Amazon detects the fraud  you will be booted out of their system.  Being on the good side always takes you in right direction and helps you earn money.

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  • SQLAuthority News – Android Efficiency Tips and Tricks – Personal Technology Tip

    - by pinaldave
    I use my phone for lots of things.  I use it mainly to replace my tablet – I can e-mail, take and edit photos, and do almost everything I can do on a laptop with this phone.  And I am sure that there are many of you out there just like me.  I personally have a Galaxy S3, which uses the Android operating system, and I have decided to feature it as the third installment of my Technology Tips and Tricks series. 1) Shortcut to your favorite contacts on home screen Access your most-called contacts easily from your home screen by holding your finger on any empty spot on the home screen.  A menu will pop up that allows you to choose Shortcuts, and Contact.  You can scroll through your contact list and then just tap on the name of the person you want to be able to dial with a single click. 2) Keep track of your data usage Yes, we all should keep a close eye on our data usage, because it is very easy to go over our limits and then end up with a giant bill at the end of the month.  Never get surprised when you open that mobile phone envelope again.  Go to Settings, then Data Usage, and you can find a quick rundown of your usage, how much data each app uses, and you can even set alarms to let you know when you are nearing the limits.   Better yet, you can set the phone to stop using data when it reaches a certain limit. 3) Bring back Good Grammar We often hear proclamations about the downfall of written language, and how texting abbreviations, misspellings, and lack of punctuation are the root of all evil.  Well, we can show all those doomsdayers that all is not lost by bringing punctuation back to texting.  Usually we leave it off when we text because it takes too long to get to the screen with all the punctuation options.  But now you can hold down the period (or “full stop”) button and a list of all the commonly-used punctuation marks will pop right up. 4) Apps, Apps, Apps and Apps And finally, I cannot end an article about smart phones without including a list of my favorite apps.  Here are a list of my Top 10 Applications on my Android (not counting social media apps). Advanced Task Killer – Keeps my phone snappy by closing un-necessary apps WhatsApp - my favorite alternate to Text SMS Flipboard - my ‘timepass’ moments Skype – keeps me close to friends and family GoogleMaps - I am never lost because of this one thing Amazon Kindle – Books my best friends DropBox - My data always safe Pluralsight Player – Learning never stops for me Samsung Kies Air – Connecting Phone to Computer Chrome – Replacing default browser I have not included any social media applications in the above list, but you can be sure that I am linked to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Android, Personal Technology

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  • SQL SERVER – Sends backups to a Network Folder, FTP Server, Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon S3

    - by pinaldave
    Let me tell you about one of the most useful SQL tools that every DBA should use – it is SQLBackupAndFTP. I have been using this tool since 2009 – and it is the first program I install on a SQL server. Download a free version, 1 minute configuration and your daily backups are safe in the cloud. In summary, SQLBackupAndFTP Creates SQL Server database and file backups on schedule Compresses and encrypts the backups Sends backups to a network folder, FTP Server, Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon S3 Sends email notifications of job’s success or failure SQLBackupAndFTP comes in Free and Paid versions (starting from $29) – see version comparison. Free version is fully functional for unlimited ad hoc backups or for scheduled backups of up to two databases – it will be sufficient for many small customers. What has impressed me from the beginning – is that I understood how it works and was able to configure the job from a single form (see Image 1 – Main form above) Connect to you SQL server and select databases to be backed up Click “Add backup destination” to configure where backups should go to (network, FTP Server, Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon S3) Enter your email to receive email confirmations Set the time to start daily full backups (or go to Settings if you need Differential or  Transaction Log backups on a flexible schedule) Press “Run Now” button to test You can get to this form if you click “Settings” buttons in the “Schedule section”. Select what types of backups and how often you want to run them and you will see the scheduled backups in the “Estimated backup plan” list A detailed tutorial is available on the developer’s website. Along with SQLBackupAndFTP setup gives you the option to install “One-Click SQL Restore” (you can install it stand-alone too) – a basic tool for restoring just Full backups. However basic, you can drag-and-drop on it the zip file created by SQLBackupAndFTP, it unzips the BAK file if necessary, connects to the SQL server on the start, selects the right database, it is smart enough to restart the server to drop open connections if necessary – very handy for developers who need to restore databases often. You may ask why is this tool is better than maintenance tasks available in SQL Server? While maintenance tasks are easy to set up, SQLBackupAndFTP is still way easier and integrates solution for compression, encryption, FTP, cloud storage and email which make it superior to maintenance tasks in every aspect. On a flip side SQLBackupAndFTP is not the fanciest tool to manage backups or check their health. It only works reliably on local SQL Server instances. In other words it has to be installed on the SQL server itself. For remote servers it uses scripting which is less reliable. This limitations is actually inherent in SQL server itself as BACKUP DATABASE command  creates backup not on the client, but on the server itself. This tool is compatible with almost all the known SQL Server versions. It works with SQL Server 2008 (all versions) and many of the previous versions. It is especially useful for SQL Server Express 2005 and SQL Server Express 2008, as they lack built in tools for backup. I strongly recommend this tool to all the DBAs. They must absolutely try it as it is free and does exactly what it promises. You can download your free copy of the tool from here. Please share your experience about using this tool. I am eager to receive your feedback regarding this article. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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  • Hello World - My Name is Christian Finn and I'm a WebCenter Evangelist

    - by Michael Snow
    12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}  Good Morning World! I'd like to introduce a new member of the Oracle WebCenter Team, Christian Finn. We decided to let him do his own intros today. Look for his guest posts next week and he'll be a frequent contributor to WebCenter blog and voice of the community. Hello (Oracle) World! Hi everyone, my name is Christian Finn. It’s a coder’s tradition to have “hello world” be the first output from a new program or in a new language. While I have left my coding days far behind, it still seems fitting to start my new role here at Oracle by saying hello to all of you—our customers, partners and my colleagues. So by way of introduction, a little background about me. I am the new senior director for evangelism on the WebCenter product management team. Not only am I new to Oracle, but the evangelism team is also brand new. Our mission is to raise the profile of Oracle in all of the markets/conversations in which WebCenter competes—social business, collaboration, portals, Internet sites, and customer/audience engagement. This is all pretty familiar turf for me because, as some of you may know, until recently I was the director of product management at Microsoft for Microsoft SharePoint Server and several other SharePoint products. And prior to that, I held management roles at Microsoft in marketing, channels, learning, and enterprise sales. Before Microsoft, I got my start in the industry as a software trainer and Lotus Notes consultant. I am incredibly excited to be joining Oracle at this time because of the tremendous opportunity that lies ahead to improve how people and businesses work. Of all the vendors offering a vision for social business, Oracle is unique in having best of breed strength in market (or coming soon) in all three critical areas: customer experience management; the middleware and back-end applications that run your business; and in the social, collaboration, and content technologies that are the connective tissue between them. Everyone else can offer one or two of the above, but not all three unified together. So it is a great time to come board and there’s a fantastic team of people hard at work on building great products for you. In the coming weeks and months you’ll be hearing much more from us. For now, we’ll kick things off with some blog posts here on the WebCenter blog. Enjoy the reads and please share your thoughts with me over Twitter on @cfinn.

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  • Add Social Elements to Your Gmail Contacts with Rapportive

    - by Matthew Guay
    Would you like to discover more about your contacts?  Xobni is a great tool for this in Outlook, and thanks to a small plugin for Gmail, you can get similar functionality right from your favorite webmail app. Setup Rapportive on Your Gmail Browse to the Rapportive site (link below), and click install to add it to your browser.  Rapportive currently only supports Firefox and Google Chrome.  In this test, we installed it on Google Chrome.  Notice that Chrome warns Rapportive may access your private data from Gmail, though Rapportive says that they only use this data securely on your computer or their servers. Next time you log into Gmail, open a message to see the new Rapportive sidebar.  Click Log in to get started. Choose if you want to let Rapportive to access your data. Finally, choose whether to stay logged into Rapportive or to log out when you log out of Gmail.   Using Rapportive Now, when you open an email, you should see more information about your contact on the right side of the message where you usually see Google AdSense ads. You may see an avatar, short bio, and links to their social networks.  You can add notes about a contact also, which lets you use Rapportive as a CRM. You may see more information on some contacts.  Here we see a contact that shows recent Tweets and links to several social networks. Take Rapportive Further You can add more features to Rapportive with Raplets, which are small extensions that add more information or CRM functionality.  To add these, click the Rapportive button on the top of Gmail, and select Add Raplets to Rapportive. Find a Raplet you want, and click Add This. A popup will open to give you more information about the Raplet; click the Add button at the bottom if you still want it. And, if you’re wish to close Rapportive without logging out of Gmail, click the Rapportive link in Gmail and select Log out. Conclusion Whether you want to find out more about your contacts or keep track of notes about them, Rapportive is a great way to do this from Gmail.  With tools like this, Gmail gets a bit more powerful and feels more like a desktop application. If you would like this type of functionality in Outlook, check out our article on how to power up Outlook’s search and contacts with Xobni. Add Rapportive to Gmail Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Import Gmail Contacts Into Outlook 2007Enhance Your Gmail Account in ChromeFigure out which Online accounts are selling your email to spammersAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogFix for New Contact Group Button Not Displaying in Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Easily Search Food Recipes With Recipe Chimp Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools

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  • The Hunger Games for Aspiring IT Professionals

    - by Dain C. Hansen
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} It seems that no one can escape the buzz around Hunger Games. And who could? Stephen King said it best in his review when he referred to the Collins’ novel as “a violent, jarring speed-rap of a novel that generates nearly constant suspense and may also generate a fair amount of controversy”. So what’s the tie in for IT? Let’s leave the dystopia of District 12 and come back to today’s reality. This is the world of radical IT paradigm shifts that haven’t been seen since Java was introduced in 1995. Everything you learned in school is probably outdated as of Friday. And everything you learned on Friday will probably change when you get to work on Monday. Nevertheless, we’re eager, we’re aspiring, we’re hungry to learn. While the challenges upon us may not rival the venomous bees (or ‘tracker jackers’) seen in this blockbuster, there are certainly obstacles to be found. In preparation, I leave you two pieces of advice - aside from avoiding werewolves… Learn the Cloud If you had asked me what to learn in 1995, I would have said, “Go learn Java”. But now my advice is “Go learn Java and then learn Cloud”. Cloud computing and Java go hand in hand. This is especially true for Oracle’s own Public Cloud which uses Java (via WebLogic 12c) as well as Oracle Database at its core foundation. Understanding the connotations of elasticity, scale, virtualization, and multi-tenancy, (to name just a few) requires a strong foundation in computer science and especially Java to get it right. Without Java, the Cloud is nothing more than a brittle application meagerly deployed on the internet. Get Social and Actively Participate And at all levels. Socializing your ideas internally is dreadfully important. And this means socializing and communicating your good ideas to lines of business, to architects, business analysts, developers, DBAs and Operations. But don’t forget to go external. Stay current by being on the lookout for blogs, tweets, webcasts, papers, podcasts and videos for your technology area. Be not just a subscriber but a participant in these channels as well. Attend industry and vendor sponsored events to learn from the experts – and seek out opportunities to stay connected with those that are smarter than you. You’ll gain more understanding if you participate actively. At the same time you’ll make friends (and allies) and you’ll be glad you did. Tell help you get social and actively participate [while learning the Cloud] here are a couple of pointers for you: See our website on Cloud and Fusion Middleware Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Find us at one of our key events Meanwhile, happy IT hunger games!

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  • ASP.NET Routing not working on IIS 7.0

    - by Rick Strahl
    I ran into a nasty little problem today when deploying an application using ASP.NET 4.0 Routing to my live server. The application and its Routing were working just fine on my dev machine (Windows 7 and IIS 7.5), but when I deployed (Windows 2008 R1 and IIS 7.0) Routing would just not work. Every time I hit a routed url IIS would just throw up a 404 error: This is an IIS error, not an ASP.NET error so this doesn’t actually come from ASP.NET’s routing engine but from IIS’s handling of expressionless URLs. Note that it’s clearly falling through all the way to the StaticFile handler which is the last handler to fire in the typical IIS handler list. In other words IIS is trying to parse the extension less URL and not firing it into ASP.NET but failing. As I mentioned on my local machine this all worked fine and to make sure local and live setups match I re-copied my Web.config, double checked handler mappings in IIS and re-copied the actual application assemblies to the server. It all looked exactly matched. However no workey on the server with IIS 7.0!!! Finally, totally by chance, I remembered the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests attribute flag on the modules key in web.config and set it to true: <system.webServer> <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"> <add name="ScriptCompressionModule" type="Westwind.Web.ScriptCompressionModule,Westwind.Web" /> </modules> </system.webServer> And lo and behold, Routing started working on the live server and IIS 7.0! This seems really obvious now of course, but the really tricky thing about this is that on IIS 7.5 this key is not necessary. So on my Windows 7 machine ASP.NET Routing was working just fine without the key set. However on IIS 7.0 on my live server the same missing setting was not working. On IIS 7.0 this key must be present or Routing will not work. Oddly on IIS 7.5 it appears that you can’t even turn off the behavior – setting runtAllManagedModuleForAllRequests="false" had no effect at all and Routing continued to work just fine even with the flag set to false, which is NOT what I would have expected. Kind of disappointing too that Windows Server 2008 (R1) can’t be upgraded to IIS 7.5. It sure seems like that should have been possible since the OS server core changes in R2 are pretty minor. For the future I really hope Microsoft will allow updating IIS versions without tying them explicitly to the OS. It looks like that with the release of IIS Express Microsoft has taken some steps to untie some of those tight OS links from IIS. Let’s hope that’s the case for the future – it sure is nice to run the same IIS version on dev and live boxes, but upgrading live servers is too big a deal to do just because an updated OS release came out. Moral of the story – never assume that your dev setup will work as is on the live setup. It took me forever to figure this out because I assumed that because my web.config on the local machine was fine and working and I copied all relevant web.config data to the server it can’t be the configuration settings. I was looking everywhere but in the .config file forever before getting desperate and remembering the flag when I accidentally checked the intellisense settings in the modules key. Never assume anything. The other moral is: Try to keep your dev machine and server OS’s in sync whenever possible. Maybe it’s time to upgrade to Windows Server 2008 R2 after all. More info on Extensionless URLs in IIS Want to find out more exactly on how extensionless Urls work on IIS 7? The check out  How ASP.NET MVC Routing Works and its Impact on the Performance of Static Requests which goes into great detail on the complexities of the process. Thanks to Jeff Graves for pointing me at this article – a great linked reference for this topic!© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in IIS7  Windows  

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  • Bancassurers Seek IT Solutions to Support Distribution Model

    - by [email protected]
    Oracle Insurance's director of marketing for EMEA, John Sinclair, attended the third annual Bancassurance Forum in Vienna last month. He reports that the outlook for bancassurance in EMEA remains positive, despite changing market conditions that have led a number of bancassurers to re-examine their business models. Vienna is at the crossroads between mature Western European markets, where bancassurance is now an established best practice, and more recently tapped Eastern European markets that offer the greatest growth potential. Attendance at the Bancassurance Forum was good, with 87 bancassurance attendees, most in very senior positions in the industry. The conference provided the chance for a lively discussion among bancassurers looking to keep abreast of the latest trends in one of Europe's most successful distribution models for insurance. Even under normal business conditions, there is a great demand for best practice sharing within the industry as there is no standard formula for success.  Each company has to chart its own course and choose the strategies for sales, products development and the structure of ownership that make sense for their business, and as soon as they get it right bancassurers need to adapt the mix to keep up with ever changing regulations, completion and economic conditions.  To optimize the overall relationship between banking and insurance for mutual benefit, a balance needs to be struck between potentially conflicting interests. The banking side of the house is looking for greater wallet share from its customers and the ability to increase profitability by bundling insurance products with higher margins - especially in light of the recent economic crisis, where margins for traditional banking products are low and completion high. The insurance side of the house seeks access to new customers through a complementary distribution channel that is efficient and cost effective. To make the relationship work, it is important that both sides of the same house forge strategic and long term relationships - irrespective of whether the underlying business model is supported by a distribution agreement, cross-ownership or other forms of capital structure. However, this third annual conference was not held under normal business conditions. The conference took place in challenging, yet interesting times. ING's forced spinoff of its insurance operations under pressure by the EU Commission and the troubling losses suffered by Allianz as a result of the Dresdner bank sale were fresh in everyone's mind. One year after markets crashed, there is now enough hindsight to better understand the implications for bancassurance and best practices that are emerging to deal with them. The loan-driven business that has been crucial to bancassurance up till now evaporated during the crisis, leaving bancassurers grappling with how to change their overall strategy from a loan-driven to a more diversified model.  Attendees came to the conference to learn what strategies were working - not only to cope with the market shift, but to take advantage of it as markets pick up. Over the course of 14 customer case studies and numerous analyst presentations, topical issues ranging from getting the business model right to the impact on capital structuring of Solvency II were debated openly. Many speakers alluded to the need to specifically design insurance products with the banking distribution channel in mind, which brings with it specific requirements such as a high degree of standardization to achieve efficiency and reduce training costs. Moreover, products must be engineered to suit end consumers who consider banks a one-stop shop. The importance of IT to the successful implementation of bancassurance strategies was a theme that surfaced regularly throughout the conference.  The cross-selling opportunity - that will ultimately determine the success or failure of any bancassurance model - can only be fully realized through a flexible IT architecture that enables banking and insurance processes to be integrated and presented to front-line staff through a common interface. However, the reality is that most bancassurers have legacy IT systems, which constrain the businesses' ability to implement new strategies to maintaining competitiveness in turbulent times. My colleague Glenn Lottering, who chaired the conference, believes that the primary opportunities for bancassurers to extract value from their IT infrastructure investments lie in distribution management, risk management with the advent of Solvency II, and achieving operational excellence. "Oracle is ideally suited to meet the needs of bancassurance," Glenn noted, "supplying market-leading software for both banking and insurance. Oracle provides adaptive systems that let customers easily integrate hybrid business processes from both worlds while leveraging existing IT infrastructure." Overall, the consensus at the conference was that the outlook for bancassurance in EMEA remains positive, despite changing market conditions that have led a number of bancassurers to re-examine their business models. John Sinclair is marketing director for Oracle Insurance in EMEA. He has more than 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services.    

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  • From NaN to Infinity...and Beyond!

    - by Tony Davis
    It is hard to believe that it was once possible to corrupt a SQL Server Database by storing perfectly normal data values into a table; but it is true. In SQL Server 2000 and before, one could inadvertently load invalid data values into certain data types via RPC calls or bulk insert methods rather than DML. In the particular case of the FLOAT data type, this meant that common 'special values' for this type, namely NaN (not-a-number) and +/- infinity, could be quite happily plugged into the database from an application and stored as 'out-of-range' values. This was like a time-bomb. When one then tried to query this data; the values were unsupported and so data pages containing them were flagged as being corrupt. Any query that needed to read a column containing the special value could fail or return unpredictable results. Microsoft even had to issue a hotfix to deal with failures in the automatic recovery process, caused by the presence of these NaN values, which rendered the whole database inaccessible! This problem is history for those of us on more current versions of SQL Server, but its ghost still haunts us. Recently, for example, a developer on Red Gate’s SQL Response team reported a strange problem when attempting to load historical monitoring data into a SQL Server 2005 database via the C# ADO.NET provider. The ratios used in some of their reporting calculations occasionally threw out NaN or infinity values, and the subsequent attempts to load these values resulted in a nasty error. It turns out to be a different manifestation of the same problem. SQL Server 2005 still does not fully support the IEEE 754 standard for floating point numbers, in that the FLOAT data type still cannot handle NaN or infinity values. Instead, they just added validation checks that prevent the 'invalid' values from being loaded in the first place. For people migrating from SQL Server 2000 databases that contained out-of-range FLOAT (or DATETIME etc.) data, to SQL Server 2005, Microsoft have added to the latter's version of the DBCC CHECKDB (or CHECKTABLE) command a DATA_PURITY clause. When enabled, this will seek out the corrupt data, but won’t fix it. You have to do this yourself in what can often be a slow, painful manual process. Our development team, after a quizzical shrug of the shoulders, simply decided to represent NaN and infinity values as NULL, and move on, accepting the minor inconvenience of not being able to tell them apart. However, what of scientific, engineering and other applications that really would like the luxury of being able to both store and access these perfectly-reasonable floating point data values? The sticking point seems to be the stipulation in the IEEE 754 standard that, when NaN is compared to any other value including itself, the answer is "unequal" (i.e. FALSE). This is clearly different from normal number comparisons and has repercussions for such things as indexing operations. Even so, this hardly applies to infinity values, which are single definite values. In fact, there is some encouraging talk in the Connect note on this issue that they might be supported 'in the SQL Server 2008 timeframe'. If didn't happen; SQL 2008 doesn't support NaN or infinity values, though one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, based on the MSDN documentation for the FLOAT type, which states that "The behavior of float and real follows the IEEE 754 specification on approximate numeric data types". However, the truth is revealed in the XPath documentation, which states that "…float (53) is not exactly IEEE 754. For example, neither NaN (Not-a-Number) nor infinity is used…". Is it really so hard to fix this problem the right way, and properly support in SQL Server the IEEE 754 standard for the floating point data type, NaNs, infinities and all? Oracle seems to have managed it quite nicely with its BINARY_FLOAT and BINARY_DOUBLE types, so it is technically possible. We have an enterprise-class database that is marketed as being part of an 'integrated' Windows platform. Absurdly, we have .NET and XPath libraries that fully support the standard for floating point numbers, and we can't even properly store these values, let alone query them, in the SQL Server database! Cheers, Tony.

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  • Exceptional DBA 2011 Jeff Moden on why you should enter in 2012

    - by Red and the Community
    My "reign" as the Red Gate Exceptional DBA is almost over and I was asked to say a few words about this wonderful award. Having been one of those folks that shied away from entering the contest during the first 3 years of the award, I thought I’d spend the time encouraging DBAs of all types to enter. Winning this award has some obvious benefits. You win a trip to PASS including money towards your flight, paid hotel stay, and, of course, paid admission. You win a wonderful bundle of software from Red Gate to make your job as a DBA a whole lot easier. You also win some pretty incredible notoriety for your resume. After all, it’s not everyone who wins a worldwide contest. To date, there are only 4 of us in the world who have won this award. You could be number 5! For me, all of that pales in comparison to what I found out during the entry process. I’m very confident in my skills, but I’m also humble. It was suggested to me that I enter the contest when it first started. I just couldn’t bring myself to nominate myself. When the 2011 nomination period opened up, several people again suggested that I enter, so I swallowed hard and asked several co-workers to have a look at the online nomination form and, if they thought me worthy, to write a nomination for me. I won’t bore you with the details, but what they wrote about me was one of the most incredible rewards that I could ever have hoped to receive. I had no idea of the impact that I’d made on my co-workers. Even if I hadn’t made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top. “Even if I hadn’t made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top.” There’s only one named winner and 4 "runners up" in this competition every year but don’t let that discourage you. Enter this competition. Even if you work in the proverbial "Mom’n'Pop" shop, get your boss and the people you work with directly to nominate you. Even if you don’t make it to the top 5, you might just find out that you’re more of a winner than you think. If you’re too proud to ask them, then take the time to nominate yourself instead of shying away like I did for the first 3 years. You work hard as a DBA and, as David Poole once said, if you’re the first person that people ask for help rather than one of the last, then you’re probably an Exceptional DBA. It’s time to stand up and be counted! Win or lose, the entry process can be a huge reward in itself. It was for me. Thank you, Red Gate, for giving me such a wonderful opportunity. Thanks for listening folks and for all that you do as DBAs. As ‘Red Green’ says, "We’re all in this together and I’m pullin’ for ya". –Jeff Moden Red Gate Exceptional DBA 2011

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  • A Closer Look at the HiddenInput Attribute in MVC 2

    - by Steve Michelotti
    MVC 2 includes an attribute for model metadata called the HiddenInput attribute. The typical usage of the attribute looks like this (line #3 below): 1: public class PersonViewModel 2: { 3: [HiddenInput(DisplayValue = false)] 4: public int? Id { get; set; } 5: public string FirstName { get; set; } 6: public string LastName { get; set; } 7: } So if you displayed your PersonViewModel with Html.EditorForModel() or Html.EditorFor(m => m.Id), the framework would detect the [HiddenInput] attribute metadata and produce HTML like this: 1: <input id="Id" name="Id" type="hidden" value="21" /> This is pretty straight forward and allows an elegant way to keep the technical key for your model (e.g., a Primary Key from the database) in the HTML so that everything will be wired up correctly when the form is posted to the server and of course not displaying this value visually to the end user. However, when I was giving a recent presentation, a member of the audience asked me (quite reasonably), “When would you ever set DisplayValue equal to true when using a HiddenInput?” To which I responded, “Well, it’s an edge case. There are sometimes when…er…um…people might want to…um…display this value to the user.” It was quickly apparent to me (and I’m sure everyone else in the room) what a terrible answer this was. I realized I needed to have a much better answer here. First off, let’s look at what is produced if we change our view model to use “true” (which is equivalent to use specifying [HiddenInput] since “true” is the default) on line #3: 1: public class PersonViewModel 2: { 3: [HiddenInput(DisplayValue = true)] 4: public int? Id { get; set; } 5: public string FirstName { get; set; } 6: public string LastName { get; set; } 7: } Will produce the following HTML if rendered from Htm.EditorForModel() in your view: 1: <div class="editor-label"> 2: <label for="Id">Id</label> 3: </div> 4: <div class="editor-field"> 5: 21<input id="Id" name="Id" type="hidden" value="21" /> 6: <span class="field-validation-valid" id="Id_validationMessage"></span> 7: </div> The key is line #5. We get the text of “21” (which happened to be my DB Id in this instance) and also a hidden input element (again with “21”). So the question is, why would one want to use this? The best answer I’ve found is contained in this MVC 2 whitepaper: When a view lets users edit the ID of an object and it is necessary to display the value as well as to provide a hidden input element that contains the old ID so that it can be passed back to the controller. Well, that actually makes sense. Yes, it seems like something that would happen *rarely* but, for those instances, it would enable them easily. It’s effectively equivalent to doing this in your view: 1: <%: Html.LabelFor(m => m.Id) %> 2: <%: Model.Id %> 3: <%: Html.HiddenFor(m => m.Id) %> But it’s allowing you to specify it in metadata on your view model (and thereby take advantage of templated helpers like Html.EditorForModel() and Html.EditorFor()) rather than having to explicitly specifying everything in your view.

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  • Exceptional DBA 2011 Jeff Moden on why you should enter in 2012

    - by RedAndTheCommunity
    My "reign" as the Red Gate Exceptional DBA is almost over and I was asked to say a few words about this wonderful award. Having been one of those folks that shied away from entering the contest during the first 3 years of the award, I thought I'd spend the time encouraging DBAs of all types to enter. Winning this award has some obvious benefits. You win a trip to PASS including money towards your flight, paid hotel stay, and, of course, paid admission. You win a wonderful bundle of software from Red Gate to make your job as a DBA a whole lot easier. You also win some pretty incredible notoriety for your resume. After all, it's not everyone who wins a worldwide contest. To date, there are only 4 of us in the world who have won this award. You could be number 5! For me, all of that pales in comparison to what I found out during the entry process. I'm very confident in my skills, but I'm also humble. It was suggested to me that I enter the contest when it first started. I just couldn't bring myself to nominate myself. When the 2011 nomination period opened up, several people again suggested that I enter, so I swallowed hard and asked several co-workers to have a look at the online nomination form and, if they thought me worthy, to write a nomination for me. I won't bore you with the details, but what they wrote about me was one of the most incredible rewards that I could ever have hoped to receive. I had no idea of the impact that I'd made on my co-workers. Even if I hadn't made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top. "Even if I hadn't made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top." There's only one named winner and 4 "runners up" in this competition every year but don't let that discourage you. Enter this competition. Even if you work in the proverbial "Mom'n'Pop" shop, get your boss and the people you work with directly to nominate you. Even if you don't make it to the top 5, you might just find out that you're more of a winner than you think. If you're too proud to ask them, then take the time to nominate yourself instead of shying away like I did for the first 3 years. You work hard as a DBA and, as David Poole once said, if you're the first person that people ask for help rather than one of the last, then you're probably an Exceptional DBA. It's time to stand up and be counted! Win or lose, the entry process can be a huge reward in itself. It was for me. Thank you, Red Gate, for giving me such a wonderful opportunity. Thanks for listening folks and for all that you do as DBAs. As 'Red Green' says, "We're all in this together and I'm pullin' for ya". --Jeff Moden Red Gate Exceptional DBA 2011

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  • SQL SERVER – master Database Log File Grew Too Big

    - by pinaldave
    Couple of the days ago, I received following email and I find this email very interesting and I feel like sharing with all of you. Note: Please read the whole email before providing your suggestions. “Hi Pinal, If you can share these details on your blog, it will help many. We understand the value of the master database and we take its regular back up (everyday midnight). Yesterday we noticed that our master database log file has grown very large. This is very first time that we have encountered such an issue. The master database is in simple recovery mode; so we assumed that it will never grow big; however, we now have a big log file. We ran the following command USE [master] GO DBCC SHRINKFILE (N'mastlog' , 0, TRUNCATEONLY) GO We know this command will break the chains of LSN but as per our understanding; it should not matter as we are in simple recovery model.     After running this, the log file becomes very small. Just to be cautious, we took full backup of the master database right away. We totally understand that this is not the normal practice; so if you are going to tell us the same, we are aware of it. However, here is the question for you? What operation in master database would have caused our log file to grow too large? Thanks, [name and company name removed as per request]“ Here was my response to them: “Hi [name removed], It is great that you are aware of all the right steps and method. Taking full backup when you are not sure is always a good practice. Regarding your question what could have caused your master database log to grow larger, let me try to guess what could have happened. Do you have any user table in the master database? If yes, this is not recommended and also NOT a good practice. If have user tables in master database and you are doing any long operation (may be lots of insert, update, delete or rebuilding them), then it can cause this situation. You have made me curious about your scenario; do revert back. Kind Regards, Pinal” Within few minutes I received reply: “That was it Pinal. We had one of the maintenance task log tables created in the master table, which had many long transactions during the night. We moved it to newly created database named ‘maintenance’, and we will keep you updated.” I was very glad to receive the email. I do not suggest that any user table should be created in the master database. It should be left alone from user objects. Now here is the question for you – can you think of any other reason for master log file growth? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Top Tier, A-Game Talent - How to Land em'

    - by GeekAgilistMercenary
    Recently the question came up from a close friend of mine, "will my PhD help me attain a higher income in the north west?"  I had to tell him, that it might get him a little more, but it won't get him in the top income brackets for the occupation.  Another time, a few days later, someone else asked this too.  Then again, I see a job posting that requires a Bachelors Degree and some other nonsense.  The job posting even states they want "A-Game" talent. I am almost shocked at how poorly part of this industry doesn't realize how unimportant a degree is to getting real top tier, a-game talent.  (and yes, I get a little riled up about this matter) You Can't Make Good Software Developers.  No college out there is going to train someone to be in the top 10%, and absolutely not to be in the top 5% of skill levels.  Colleges can NOT do this.  It is up to the individual, and the individual alone.  If top tier talent seems to come from a college, one should check their premise and look at the motivations the individuals have to go to that school.  There is most likely a reason that top tier talent appears to be made there.  The college however, can only guide or assist, but I repeat that "top tier talent is a very individualistic endeavor". Some might say, well a group is needed, support is needed, this and that are needed.  True, an individual needs a support system and a college can provide that, but it generally ends there.  The support group helps, provides a sounding wall, and provides correlation to good ideas for the a-game top tier geek.  But again, the endeavor is the individuals desire. top tier talent is a very individualistic endeavor - Me Hiring Top Tier, A-Game Talent There are a few things when trying to hire this level of game player. The first thing is to not require a degree of any sort.  Sure, it looks good, but it won't dictate anything other than the individual was able to go through the regimented steps of college. List the skills and ideas that you would like to find in an individual.  Think of two people meeting for the first time, what do you want to know about the other individual.  Team fit is absolutely fundamental for top tier talent.  That support group that I mentioned above, top tier talent works best with a solid group of players. Keep your technology up to date, moving forward, and don't bore your top talent if you manage to get it.  If the company slows down, they will leave.  The more valuable they find out they are, the lower tolerance they'll have for this.  For managers, directors, and leaders in an organization this is THE challenge for them. Provide opportunities not just for advancement, but ways for them to advance their knowledge such as training, a book budget, or other means.  Even if some software they want to use isn't used ton the project, get it for them (within reason of course ? couple $100 or even a few $1000 for a good software license to MSDN, Tellerik, or other suite of software is ideal). Don't push them to, and don't let them overwork themselves into burnout.  This, as a leader in an organization is easy to do if one finds themselves actually hiring top talent.  Because top talent just provides results and more results.  But they are human, they will break, don't be the cause of that or you'll lose your talent. For now, that is it from me on this topic, back to the revenue, code, projects, and pushing forward. For the original entry, check out my personal blog with other juicy tech tidbits, rants, raves, and the like. Agilist Mercenary

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 19 (sys.dm_exec_query_stats)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_exec_query_stats DMV is one of the most useful DMV’s out there when it comes to performance tuning. If you have been keeping up with this blog series this month, you know that I started out on Day 1 reviewing many of the DMV’s within the ‘exec’ namespace. I’m not sure how I missed this one considering how valuable it is, but hey, they say it’s better late than never right?? On Day 7 and Day 8 we reviewed the sys.dm_exec_procedure_stats and sys.dm_exec_trigger_stats respectively. This sys.dm_exec_query_stats DMV is very similar to these two. As a matter of fact, this DMV will return all of the information you saw in the other two DMV’s, but in addition to that, you can see stats for all queries that have cached execution plans on your server. You can even see stats for statements that are ran Ad-Hoc as long as they are still cached in the buffer pool. To better illustrate this DMV, let have a quick look at it: SELECT * FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats As you can see, there is a lot of information returned from this DMV. I wont go into detail about each and every one of these columns, but I will touch on a few of them briefly. The first column is the ‘sql_handle’, which if you remember from Day 4 of our blog series, I explained how you can use this column to extract the actual SQL text that was executed. The next columns statement_start_offset and statement_end_offset provide you a way of extracting the exact SQL statement that was executed as part of a batch. The plan_handle column is used to extract the Execution plan that was used, which we talked about during Day 5 of this blog series. Later in the result set, you have columns to identify how many times a particular statement was executed, how much CPU time it used, how many reads/writes it performed, the duration, how many rows were returned, etc. These columns provide you with a solid avenue to begin your performance optimization. The last column I will touch on is the query_plan_hash column. A lot of times when you have Dynamic SQL running on your server, you have similar statements with different parameter values being passed in. Many times these types of statements will get similar execution plans and then a Binary hash value can be generated based on these similar plans. This query plan hash can be used to find the cost of all queries that have similar execution plans and then you can tune based on that plan to improve the performance of all of the individual queries. This is a very powerful way of identifying and tuning Ad-hoc statements that run on your server. As I stated earlier, this sys.dm_exec_query_stats DMV is a very powerful and recommended DMV for performance tuning. You are able to quickly identify statements that are running on your server and analyze their impact on system resources. Using this DMV to track down the biggest performance killers on your server will allow you to make the biggest gains once you focus your tuning efforts on those top offenders. For more information about this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189741.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • JDBC Triggers

    - by Tim Dexter
    Received a question from a customer last week, they were using the new rollup patch on top of 10.1.3.4.1. What are these boxes for? Don't you know? Surely? Well, they are for ... that new functionality, you know it's in the user docs, that thingmabobby doodah. OK, I dont know either, I can have a guess but let me check first. Serveral IM sessions, emails and a dig through the readme for the new patch and I had my answer. Its not in the official documentation, yet. Leslie is on the case. The two fields were designed to allow an Admin to set a users context attributes before a connection is made to a database and for un-setting the attributes after the connection is broken by the extraction engine. We got a sample from the Enterprise Manager team on how they will be using it with their VPD connections. FUNCTION bip_to_em_user (user_name_in IN VARCHAR2) RETURN BOOLEAN IS BEGIN SETEMUSERCONTEXT(user_name_in, MGMT_USER.OP_SET_IDENTIFIER); return TRUE; END bip_to_em_user; And used in the jdbc data source definition like this (pre-process function): sysman.mgmt_bip.bip_to_em_user(:xdo_user_name) You, of course can call any function that is going to return a boolean value, another example might be. FUNCTION set_per_process_username (username_in IN VARCHAR2) RETURN BOOLEAN IS BEGIN SETUSERCONTEXT(username_in); return TRUE; END set_per_process_username Just use your own function/package to set some user context. Very grateful for the mail from Leslie on the EM team's usage but I had to try it out. Rather than set up a VPD, I opted for a simpler test. Can I log the comings and goings of users and their queries using the same pre-process text box. Reaching back into the depths of my developer brain to remember some pl/sql, it was not that deep and I came up with: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION BIPTEST (user_name_in IN VARCHAR2, smode IN VARCHAR2) RETURN BOOLEAN AS BEGIN INSERT INTO LOGTAB VALUES(user_name_in, sysdate,smode); RETURN true; END BIPTEST; To call it in the pre-fetch trigger. BIPTEST(:xdo_user_name) Not going to set the pl/sql world alight I know, but you get the idea. As a new connection is made to the database its logged in the LOGTAB table. The SMODE value just sets if its an entry or an exit. I used the pre- and post- boxes. NAME UPDATE_DATE S_FLAG oracle 14-MAY-10 09.51.34.000000000 AM Start oracle 14-MAY-10 10.23.57.000000000 AM Finish administrator 14-MAY-10 09.51.38.000000000 AM Start administrator 14-MAY-10 09.51.38.000000000 AM Finish oracle 14-MAY-10 09.51.42.000000000 AM Start oracle 14-MAY-10 09.51.42.000000000 AM Finish It works very well, I had some fun trying to find a nasty query for the extraction engine so that the timestamps from in to out actually had a difference. That engine is fast! The only derived value you can pass from BIP is :xdo_user_name. None of the other server values are available. Connection pools are not currently supported but planned for a future release. Now you know what those fields are for and look for some official documentation, rather than my ramblings, coming soon!

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  • What’s the Difference Between Succession Management and Talent Reviews?

    - by HCM-Oracle
    By Marcie Van Houten Is there a difference or are they pieces of one holistic strategic talent process? And can you have one without the other?  First, let me give a quick definition of each.  Succession planning (or management) is about creating succession slates or talent pools in support of a critical job or position or sets thereof. And then using those plans to help mitigate risk and plan talent needs for the organization.  Talent reviews (known by other names often) are sets of meetings where managers and executives come together to review, discuss and often heatedly debate the merits and potential of their employees, and then place and sometimes calibrate that talent on a performance to potential matrix.  These are some of the most strategic conversations happening in conference rooms across the globe. I speak with a lot of organizations about their practices in this area and the answers to these questions are as varied and nuanced as there are organizations thinking about them.  Some are passionate about their talent review processes and have a very evolved and thoughtful approach.  They really know their people, where their talent is, and the opportunities they plan to offer them.  And to them that is their succession process.  They may never create a slate of named candidates for a job or assign employees to formal talent pools.   On the flip side there are other organizations that create slates and slates and often multiple talent pools to support their strategic positions.  Through these, they are able to mitigate the risk associated with having a key player leave their organization.  And for them, that is their succession process.  Some will start from the lower levels of their organization and roll up their succession plans, while other organizations only cover their top 200 executives and key positions with plans.  And then there are organizations that leverage some of all of these.  Ultimately, the goals are to increase employee engagement, reduce talent-related risk, ensure the right talent is aligned to the strategic initiatives and to drive business value.  The approaches are as unique as the organizations they represent and the business opportunities they are looking to seize upon.   And that's ok.  It's great in fact. Because one thing that is common is the recognition that the need to know your people and align your top talent to the future needs of the organization is mission critical. Sure, there are a set of commonly recognized best practices and guiding principles for all of this.  There is no one right or perfect answer.  And that is what makes this all so much darn fun.  With Talent Review and Succession Management from Oracle HCM Cloud, we’ve blended the ability to support your strategic talent review conversations with both succession plans and talent pools allowing for one very seamless and interactive process. So whether you create a lot of succession plans, only focus on talent pools, have a robust talent review process, or all of the above, Oracle has you covered. I’m looking forward to spending time with our customers at the upcoming OHUG Global Conference 2014 happening June 9-13 in Las Vegas.  It’s an opportunity for me to talk to customers about their business and how they are doing strategic talent processes like talent reviews and succession.  I hope to see you there. Marcie Van Houten brings over 20 years of management consulting, information systems and human capital management experience to her role as director of product strategy at Oracle. Ms. Van Houten has spent the past several years at Oracle working closely with customers to help drive the direction of the company's talent and succession management applications. Additionally, she spent nine years at PeopleSoft as Director of Information Systems leading human capital management implementation projects. Marcie Van Houten lives in Walnut Creek, California, and holds a MBA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.  You can follow her on Twitter: @MarcieVH

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  • Use Any Folder For Your Ubuntu Desktop (Even a Dropbox Folder)

    - by Trevor Bekolay
    By default, Ubuntu creates a folder called Desktop in your home directory that gets displayed on your desktop. What if you want to use something else, like your Dropbox folder? Here we look at how to use any folder for your desktop. Not only can you change your desktop folder, you can change the location of any other folder Ubuntu creates for you in your home folder, like Documents or Music – and this works in any Linux distribution using the Gnome desktop manager. In this example, we’re going to change desktop to show our Dropbox folder. Open your home folder in a File Browser by clicking on Places > Home Folder. In the Home Folder, open the .config folder. By default, .config is hidden, so you may have to show hidden folders (temporarily) by clicking on View > Show Hidden Files. Then open the .config folder by double-clicking on it. Now open the user-dirs.dirs file… If double-clicking on it does not open it in a text editor, right-click on it and choose Open with Other Application… and find a text editor like Gedit. Change the entry associated with XDG_DESKTOP_DIR to the folder you want to be shown as your desktop. In our case, this is $HOME/Dropbox. Note: The “~” shortcut for the home directory won’t work in this file (use $HOME for that), but an absolute path (i.e. a path starting with “/”) will work. Feel free to change the locations of the other folders as well. Save and close user-dirs.dirs. At this point you can either log off and then log back on to get your desktop back, or open a terminal window Applications > Accessories > Terminal and enter: killall nautilus Nautilus (the file manager in Gnome) will restart itself and display your newly chosen folder as the desktop! This is a cool trick to use any folder for your Ubuntu desktop. What did you use as your desktop folder? Let us know in the comments! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Sync Your Pidgin Profile Across Multiple PCs with DropboxAdd "My Dropbox" to Your Windows 7 Start MenuCreate a Keyboard Shortcut to Access Hidden Desktop Icons and FilesAdd "My Computer" to Your Windows 7 / Vista TaskbarCheck your Disk Usage on Ubuntu with Disk Usage Analyzer TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Use Flixtime To Create Video Slideshows Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation" Enable or Disable the Task Manager Using TaskMgrED Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative

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  • Algorithm for querying linearly through a non-linear list of questions

    - by JoshLeaves
    For a multiplayers trivia game, I need to supply my users with a new quizz in a desired subject (Science, Maths, Litt. and such) at the start of every game. I've generated about 5K quizzes for each subject and filled my database with them. So my 'Quizzes' database looks like this: |ID |Subject |Question +-----+------------+---------------------------------- | 23 |Science | What's water? | 42 |Maths | What's 2+2? | 99 |Litt. | Who wrote "Pride and Prejudice"? | 123 |Litt. | Who wrote "On The Road"? | 146 |Maths | What's 2*2? | 599 |Science | You know what's cool? |1042 |Maths | What's the Fibonacci Sequence? |1056 |Maths | What's 42? And so on... (Much more detailed/complex but I'll keep the exemple simple) As you can see, due to technical constraints (MongoDB), my IDs are not linear but I can use them as an increasing suite. So far, my algorithm to ensure two users get a new quizz when they play together is the following: // Take the last played quizzes by P1 and P2 var q_one = player_one.getLastPlayedQuizz('Maths'); var q_two = player_two.getLastPlayedQuizz('Maths'); // If both of them never played in the subject, return first quizz in the list if ((q_one == NULL) && (q_two == NULL)) return QuizzDB.findOne({subject: 'Maths'}); // If one of them never played, play the next quizz for the other player // This quizz is found by asking for the first quizz in the desired subject where // the ID is greater than the last played quizz's ID (if the last played quizz ID // is 42, this will return 146 following the above example database) if (q_one == NULL) return QuizzDB.findOne({subject: 'Maths', ID > q_two}); if (q_two == NULL) return QuizzDB.findOne({subject: 'Maths', ID > q_one}); // And if both of them have a lastPlayedQuizz, we return the next quizz for the // player whose lastPlayedQuizz got the higher ID if (q_one > q_two) return QuizzDB.findOne({subject: 'Maths', ID > q_one}); else return QuizzDB.findOne({subject: 'Maths', ID > q_two}); Now here comes the real problem: Once I get to the end of my database (let's say, P1's last played quizz in 'Maths' is 1056, P2's is 146 and P3 is 1042), following my algorithm, P1's ID is the highest so I ask for the next question in 'Maths' where ID is superior to 1056. There is nothing, so I roll back to the beginning of my quizz list (with a random skipper to avoid having the first question always show up). P1 and P2's last played will then be 42 and they will start fresh from the beginning of the list. However, if P1 (42) plays against P3 (1042), the resulting ID will be 1056...which P1 already played two games ago. Basically, players who just "rolled back" to the beginning of the list will be brought back to the end of the list by players who still haven't rolled back. The rollback WILL happen in the end, but it'll take time and there'll be a "bottleneck" at the beginning and at the end. Thus my question: What would be the best algorith to avoid this bottleneck and ensure players don't get stuck endlessly on the same quizzes? Also bear in mind that I've got some technical constraints: I can't get a random question in a subject (ie: no "QuizzDB.findOne({subject: 'Maths'}).skip(random());"). It's cool to skip on one to twenty records, but the MongoDB documentation warns against skipping too many documents. I would like to avoid building an array of every quizz played by each player and find the next non-played in the database with a $nin. Thanks for your help

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  • SQL SERVER – Another lesser known feature of SQL Server Management Studio 2012 – Guest Post by Balmukund Lakhani

    - by Pinal Dave
    This is a fantastic blog post from my dear friend Balmukund ( blog | twitter | facebook ). He had presented a fantastic session in our last UG and there were lots of requests from attendees that he blogs about it. Well, here is the blog post about the same very popular UG session. Let us read the entire blog post in the voice of the Balmukund himself. In one of my previous guest blog on SQL Authority, I wrote about “Additional Connection Parameter” tab of login screen in SQL Server Management Studio (a.k.a. SSMS). On the similar lines, this blog is going to show little less known new feature of login main screen (“Connect to Server”) of SSMS 2012. You might have seen below screen countless times and you might wonder what is there is blog about in this simple screen. Well, continue reading and you would get the answer. Many times, DBA have to login to production server from non-regular machine, may be a developer’s workstation. Once you login to SQL, do your work and close the management studio. Do you know that your server name is saved in management studio? Of course, very useful feature because you may not like to type server name/IP address every time. Whatever servers you have connected, it would be stored by management studio. But sometime, it’s annoying! What you would do if you want SQL Server Management Studio to forget “all” the servers listed in drop down of Server name? To do that, you need to know how and where it’s stored. You can use one of my favorite tool from sysinternals called Process Monitor (also known as ProcMon) and easily figure out that this is stored in a file under your windows user profile. Below is the file in SQL 2008 R2 Management Studio. %appdata%\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Shell\SqlStudio.bin For SQL Server 2012, here is what we can see in ProcMon So, the path is %appdata%\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Tools\Shell\SqlStudio.bin So far, you might wonder, where is the new feature? I have been asked by many users to delete entries from SSMS “Connect to Server” server name list. Well, unofficially, you can delete the file directly which we found via ProcMon. Note that delete file to get rid of server list is not officially supported by Microsoft. Better way to achieve this is provided in SSMS 2012. To delete the servers from the list, highlight the name we want to delete (via keyboard or mouse) and then press delete key via keyboard. We can’t be multi-select and has to be done one by one. We can delete as many entries we want. I have delete few from first screenshot taken and here is the modified version. This is not available in SQL 2008 R2 and its previous version. This came from feedback given to SQL Server Product group. Hope you have learned something new today! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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